Utilitarianism is interesting because it takes primarily a consequentialist approach to ethic looking at the ends to something and looks at the pros or cons of an action, or what causes the most happiness versus the amount of generating pain from an action. Even though it sounds simple to compare the amount of happiness versus pain the equation that we have to use for utilitarianism does not always work the that it should and other flaws that we will go over in this essay taking an unusual stance on the matter, questioning the utility monster but also criticizes utilitarianism later but also saying that it is the best that we have currently have. The idea of a utility monster is not a valid objection against utilitarianism and can be worked
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But when you try to apply utilitarian ethics in a small scale decision affecting a couple of people when we to the calculations come to a solution that goes against our intuition for one example that we got in class is of a couple deciding where they should go to eat. The guy wants to go to restaurant A (intensity +7) while she does not want to (-2 equaling 5). She wants to try restaurant B (+3) but he is mostly apathetic to the idea (+1 equaling 4). Even though our intuition says let’s go to restaurant B because nobody is necessarily against the idea of restaurant B a utilitarian equation says that we should go to restaurant A, even if it seems incorrect.
The second flaw to utilitarianism is that does dehumanize ethics. Even though it is the best part about utilitarianism that it is objective and tries to have ethics based on facts and in logic it is too dehumanizing. When you are just looking at numbers when doing the calculus, it tears away the true value of these numbers that are supposed to represent. These numbers are supposed to values of a human being. When you make a decision based off of these number we must keep in mind the decision is still affecting people with lives and
But when you try to apply utilitarian ethics in a small scale decision affecting a couple of people when we to the calculations come to a solution that goes against our intuition for one example that we got in class is of a couple deciding where they should go to eat. The guy wants to go to restaurant A (intensity +7) while she does not want to (-2 equaling 5). She wants to try restaurant B (+3) but he is mostly apathetic to the idea (+1 equaling 4). Even though our intuition says let’s go to restaurant B because nobody is necessarily against the idea of restaurant B a utilitarian equation says that we should go to restaurant A, even if it seems incorrect.
The second flaw to utilitarianism is that does dehumanize ethics. Even though it is the best part about utilitarianism that it is objective and tries to have ethics based on facts and in logic it is too dehumanizing. When you are just looking at numbers when doing the calculus, it tears away the true value of these numbers that are supposed to represent. These numbers are supposed to values of a human being. When you make a decision based off of these number we must keep in mind the decision is still affecting people with lives and